Then and now--the contrast is great. Then the hideous Georgian
"three-decker" reared its monstrous form, blocking out the sight of the
sanctuary; immense pews like cattle-pens filled the nave. The woodwork
was high and panelled, sometimes richly carved, as at Whalley Church,
Lancashire, where some pews have posts at the corners like an
old-fashioned four-posted bed. Sometimes two feet above the top of the
woodwork there were brass rods on which slender curtains ran, and were
usually drawn during sermon time in order that the attention of the
occupants of the pew might not be distracted from devout meditations on
the preacher's discourse--or was it to woo slumber? A Berkshire dame
rather admired these old-fashioned pews, wherein, as she naively
expressed it, "a body might sleep comfortable without all the parish
knowin' on it."
It was of such pews that Swift wrote in his _Baucis and Philemon_:
"A bedstead of the antique mode,
Compact of timber many a load,
Such as our ancestors did use
Was metamorphosed into pews;
Which still their ancient nature keep
By lodging folks disposed to sleep."
The squire's pew was a wondrous structure, with its own special
fire-place, the fire in which the old gentleman used to poke vigorously
when the parson was too long in preaching.
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